Wall of Fire
by ethnonyms
Summary: S1, AU. In the summer of 1999, upon the arrival of seven bewildered children to File Island, an unknown human enemy immediately takes a cruel interest. Calling himself Throat, and claiming to be the sole "true" Chosen Child left in the Digital World, he targets Jou as the weakest of the group and kidnaps him. Now, the Child of Faith must pay for the sins of the past. -TRIGGERS.-
1. Spark

He's back again—that _boy_, the one with weirdly colored Digivice, but no Digimon partner. The boy who inexplicably hates you, and all the other kids who came here with you from summer camp to the Digital World.

"Hello, everyone," Throat says, smiling. You all freeze. He's deceptively relaxed, with his arms folded standing on the forest path. Nothing in his calm demeanor betrays the very worrying threat his presence actually brings.

'Throat.' That's what he calls himself, not giving any explanation for the bizarre nickname. Even when he says it, you can _hear_ the arrogance dripping plainly off the word. He makes no secret of the fact that he thinks you're all the scum on the earth. It's only been a few days, but already you find Throat's smile faintly disturbing: _manic_, almost, like he'd enjoy nothing more than seeing you skinned alive.

At the sight of him, you suppress a shudder, and start to edge your way toward the back of the group. Suddenly, shame curls in your gut and forces you to remain in place. Being twelve, you are the oldest in the group, and that technically means you're also solely responsible for protecting everyone else. It doesn't, _shouldn't_ matter at all, that Throat is still several years older than you, probably at least fifteen.

Or that he's leagues more dangerous, even without a Digimon.

"Oh _no_," cries Mimi, pointing at him and not even attempting to keep her voice down, "it's HIM!"

Privately, you agree wholeheartedly with her sentiments, although you'd never dare to voice it aloud. Throat is exactly the _last_ person you had hoped to see today, after the fiasco at Toy Town—you've all barely put a kilometer between yourselves the childish wonderland, where mayor Monzaemon had apologized to everyone for the black gear incident with a Lovely Attack that made you all incredibly lighthearted and happy. The last of that joy sinks and fades from your chest now, as the whole group tenses at the new encounter.

As if sensing your distress, Gomamon immediately presses up against your leg, glaring over at Throat with his orange fur standing on end. You and your so-called Digimon partner haven't exactly gotten along great these past few days since you've met, but despite that you still do your best to watch out for him, and you like to think that he'd willingly return the favor if given the chance. You'd sort of like to say something to reassure him now, or maybe yourself, but angry voices interrupt your worried thoughts before you can speak.

"_You_ again?" demands Yamato from the front of the group, taking an aggressive step forward. Already he's completely livid, which is no surprise, considering what that creep pulled with Takeru the last time he showed up. "You've got some serious nerve, following us all the way out here! What the hell do you want?"

Throat smiles. You think he's ordinary-looking enough at first glance, with tanned skin and choppy, uneven dark hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of his head. His clothes, though visibly worn, are nothing special, especially not for a kid who's a few years older than your group. You noticed a number of long, faded white scars running down the length of his right arm during the last encounter, but that's only thanks to your unique sensitivity to medical issues, a result of your first-aid training and family history. At least it's been good for something since you got here.

The thing that _really_ gets you is Throat's eyes. You suppose that they're somewhat unusual in appearance, ice-blue in color, with irises that are just shy of oblique in shape...but the unsettling _gleam_ behind them is what always sends chills running down your spine. Every single time, like clockwork, when he turns those blue eyes on you, something at your mind just raises an automatic alarm—every nerve beneath your skin screaming at you to run.

Something is just not right in that kid's mind. You don't need to be a doctor to see that. And, though some of the other kids might not be ready to admit it yet, Throat's behavior toward your group as a whole is really beginning to frighten all of you. He might act like it to unnerve you, but he's definitely _not_ playing around.

He spreads his arms out toward Yamato in a seemingly conciliatory gesture, stepping forward. "Why do you sound so pissed at me, _Yama_-_kun_~?" he asks, teasingly. "Come on, don't be angry! I only came here to talk."

"That's a lie!" shouts Takeru, bravely stepping out a bit from behind Yamato's legs. "That's what you said to us last time, and you were lying!"

Throat's casual, lazy expression freezes at this accusation, halting mid-step to look at the younger boy. Takeru, suddenly frightened, retreats back into his brother's shadow.

Slowly, Throat relaxes. The motion looks rather forced, judging by his posture, but then, you were never exactly great at reading people. In fact, when you'd first met Throat—just a few kilometers out from that beach with the inexplicable trolley, where Gabumon had fought Seadramon the evening before—your first reaction was actually _joy_. You were such an idiot. The sight of another human alone elated you; you'd been immediately, absolutely convinced that this smiling stranger was the answer to all your prayers. You thought he was there to _deliver_ you all from this bizarre, frightening new world.

It turned out you couldn't have been more wrong. Throat may just be the single most frightening thing you've encountered since you arrived.

After the moment of tense silence passes, the teen finally answers Takeru's accusation, his voice deliberately casual.

"Yeah, I guess I _was_ lying," he admits with a short laugh, shrugging unconcernedly, as if to say _These things happen, but what are you gonna do?_ "I'm really sorry about all that mess from last time, Takeru. You understand, though, right? I mean, if anyone wants to point fingers, it should be at Yamato. If your precious _onii-chan_ and his friends had been a little more willing to hear sense, I would never have had to _punish_ you the way I did..."

Takeru pales. Patamon, hovering over his shoulder, shrilly cries "_HEY!_" in righteous anger, and Yamato snarls something unintelligible and lunges forward, his whole body shaking in rage. Sora and Koushiro, with twin shouts of warning, scramble forward just in time to seize Yamato by his arms and pull him back toward the rest of the group. Yamato fights them for a good twenty seconds before finally calming down, still scowling at Throat with outright murder in his eyes.

"You're _dead _for that, do you hear me!" Yamato shouts at him, red in the face with his hands balled into fists. "I don't care WHAT weird powers you have with that fake Digivice of yours, or all the nonsense you've been spouting about us not _belonging_ here—as soon as I get my hands on you, I'm going to beat all that crap out of you until you regret the day you EVER messed with my little brother!"

Taichi, who's been watching the proceedings with rising anger, finally jumps in as well, bursting out, "Yamato's RIGHT, you ugly creep! We're done letting you push us around!"

Taichi spins around to face his partner Digimon, and a second before the goggle-clad boy shouts his command, you know exactly what he's going say.

"Agumon! ATTACK!" Taichi roars, and just like that all hopes for diplomacy disappear.

_"Taichi! Wait!"_ Sora calls out, alarmed, but Agumon is already running forward. The Digimon's jaws part, embers burning dimly at the back of his throat, and involuntarily you pull Gomamon a bit closer to your chest with your eyes cast downward. You don't like the idea of _any_ of the Digimon in your group fighting, especially not your own partner. Especially not a fight you're all destined to lose.

"_Baby Flame!_" Agumon cries, summoning a ball of fire that erupts from his mouth and races directly towards Throat.

Despite everything you're more than a little anxious about seeing one of the Digimon attack a human, however antagonistic, but you needn't waste your concern: Throat jumps well out of range of the attack before it's even properly launched, and before Agumon can prepare a second blast, the human has already pulled out his own clunky Digivice in preparation.

"That was really rude of you, Taichi-kun!" Throat calls out with a breathless laugh, any friendliness of his tone belied by the unhinged mania shining in his eyes. "Sending your _pretender_ Digimon to attack ME? Hahaha! I don't know where anyone got the idea that a stupid, childish fool like you could ever be a Chosen Child!"

"We still don't even know what that is!" Koushiro says agitatedly, his stance guarded, Tentomon standing at his side. "We've never done anything to you!"

Throat turns to smirk darkly at both of them, and his expression turns your insides quickly to ice.

"And if I have it my way, Koushiro, you never will," Thoat says simply, reaching for a button on his Digivice.

"No! _Agumon!_" Taichi shouts, starting forward, but with a gutted feeling in your stomach you realize it's already too late.

Grinning savagely, Throat presses his thumb down on one of the buttons of his Digivice: at once it begins to glow in his hand, emitting a bright light not unlike the one that comes from Taichi's, Yamato's, Sora's, Koushiro's, and finally Mimi's, when their Digimon have evolved to Adult level.

Unlike the other Digivices, however, Throat's also changes color when it glows. At his command, it shifts from its usual white to a dark, foreboding shade of gray, emmitting an unpleasantly high-pitched feedback that would make you cringe if you didn't have more pressing problems vying for your attention. Such as, for example, the fact that everyone's Digimon partners have suddenly begun to keel over, dropping one by one like plants wilting under the glare of a heat lamp.

"_Soraaaaa_," Piyomon moans dizzily, her wings crumpling as she spirals down to crash on the forest floor. Patamon cries out weakly and follows suit a moment later. Both of their small bodies continue to twist and spasm, caused by some unseen pain, much to the horror of their human parners.

"Piyomon!" Sora screams, rushing over, and Takeru does the same for Patamon. Unable to revive his Digimon immediately with his pleas and shaking, Takeru helplessly looks to Yamato for help several seconds later, but Yamato has his own problems.

"Gabumon?" he asks, face ashen, struggling to lay the limply writhing Digimon down on the forest floor as gently as he can, which is difficult given his size. "Gabumon? Gabumon!"

The others are faring much the same. Glancing quickly around, you see Mimi, Koushiro, and Taichi all struggling to reach their own partners, who seem to be semi-conscious at best and are all crying out in terrible pain. Mimi is sobbing, Taichi's shouting, and Koushiro looks utterly lost, but they're all getting the same nonexistent results.

And it's the same for you. In your arms, Gomamon has gone completely limp, twitching and groaning in response to some phantom agony that you are unable to see. Watching him suffer, you find yourself filled with an icy fear that is somehow _worse_ than all those times when you were attacked by a scary or enormous Digimon since you arrived. You feel utterly useless, mind racing in vain to think of what else you could have done, _anything_ you could have done, to stop this nightmare from repeating itself. This is exactly what happened the last time Throat found your group—he did _something_ with that damned Digivice of his to incapacitate all the Digimon, and you and the other children were helpless to make it better, even with all your medical knowledge.

Equally bad, without your Digimon being able to fight, Throat has you all completely at his mercy, which is exactly the last place any of you want to be. He's older, and stronger, than any of you; this time, you seriously doubt Taichi will be lucky enough to stumble across a _second_ bulldozer in the middle of the forest like the one that was lying around Andromon's factory. And even then, with that bit of good fortune on your parts, Koushiro voiced suspicion that Throat could have beaten you all anyway—that he was really only toying with you. He's too eerily strong and quick for a human, practically impossible to keep trained in your field of vision while in motion unless you're prepared to break your neck from spinning around too fast.

"Gomamon!" you beg your partner heplessly, forcing yourself to loosen your hold on the Digimon so you can look at him properly. Your heart skips a beat at the sight of his spasming limbs, and he only mewls in pain at the sound of your voice. "Gomamon? _Gomamon_, can you hear me? It's Jou, Jou Kido! Please, Gomamon PLEASE wake up!"

You could stand there wallowing in your anxiety and panic all day, if you had the time, but Throat's not going to give you that chance. Sudden, freezing terror overtakes you, when a powerful hand clamps down onto one of your shoulders from behind. You feel the taller boy standing right behind you, horrifyingly close for your comfort. You didn't even see him move.

"Don't worry, _Jou-senpai_," Throat's voice purrs mockingly into your ear, using Sora's affectionate nickname for you, even though he should _never_ have been close enough to the group to be able to hear it. "You won't need a false partner like _him,_ where you're going."

You open your mouth to protest, or maybe just to scream, but before you can, crushing fingers wrap themselves around your windpipe. The pressure forces you to let go of Gomamon against your will, so that you can attempt to pry the hand away before you suffocate.

It's no use, however. He's much too strong to pry off, especially for a weakling like you. You're already starting to black out from lack of oxygen before your bitten nails have even drawn his blood. Throat laughs coldly in your ear, the noise tapering off into a nonsense sound as something slimy licks its way across your cheek. You somehow find the strength to shudder in fear, even though you don't understand what's going on.

"You know, I thought at first to myself that it would be a little crybaby like _Takeru_, who I stole away from the others to have my fun," he murmurs happily, hushed, his lips pressing gently in a smile against your temple; a mockery of affection. "Or maybe, someone so simple and _oblivious_, like Mimi-chan. But _you're_ somehow even weaker those two, aren't you, Jou-senpai? Even your pretender of a Digimon can't fight. Hide all you want behind the others, Jou, but** I** can still see it. I can see how very _afraid_ you are..."

Your mind is swimming with panic at his words, frightened and overwhelmed, despite the lack of comprehension stemming from lack of oxygen. _But I have to _protect_ them_, you can only think helplessly as your eyes roll back, unseeing, into your skull, with Taichi and Sora's renewed shouts of terror ringing in your ears._ Everyone._ _I have to protect everyone_. _I'm the oldest. I'm responsible for all of them. _

_**Gomamon**..._

Then, nothing.


	2. Brand

You wake up, disoriented and in pain. Your back is pressed down flat against a hard, unforgiving surface, and all over you feel vaguely dizzy and ill without knowing why. You groan, eyes twitching behind their lids, and try to shift your body to a more comfortable position, but for some reason you can't move your hands from where they're trapped behind you. You swallow dryly and register a dull, pounding ache that flares up around your throat from the motion, as though your neck has been crushed. It's a little painful just breathing in and out of your mouth.

The pain is the first thing you notice. Only after that, do feel the hands—unfamiliar, feather-like touches of fingertips upon your skin and clothes, running up and down the length of your body. They're touching you everywhere.

It's the last one that finally makes your eyes snap open in panic. "Hey!" you shout hoarsely, struggling with your whole body to move, even though brings about host of sharp new pains in your throat and your cramped limbs. "G-Get off! Who's there?"

You think at first that your blurred vision is only because you're tired, but then you remember you aren't wearing your glasses. All around you are nothing but blurry shadows and indistinct, impenetrable darkness. A moment later, you hear a sound of cruel laughter coming from above, and the sound makes your heart suddenly skip a beat in shock and terror: you recall then, all the events that led up to you passing out, with _his_ hand squeezed tightly around your neck. The touches on your body stop at once, but that does nothing to abate your growing fear.

Throat laughs again, sounding worryingly cheerful.

"What's that look for, senpai?" he asks from somewhere above you, mocking you again with Sora's name for you. "You look _awfully_ scared."

"Where am I?" you demand, lying deathly still beneath him, though you can't stop your body from trembling. "W-What have you done with the others?"

The older boy hums noncommittally, ignoring your question. You hear him pick something up, and a second later, a pair of thin wiry objects brush against both sides of your face. You flinch instinctively, but then realize it's only your glasses that are being slid over your eyes. With them on, your vision quickly focuses and clears, and you gape around at your unfamiliar surroundings: your captor has brought you to a wide underground tunnel of some sort, with stone walls on all sides that are somehow perfectly rectangular like they're man-made.

The tunnel is dark and oppressive. There are no signs of life or motion in either direction, but when you strain your ears you think you can hear the sounds of churning water echoing faintly off the walls. On the ground nearby, you see a handful of ragged blankets and unfamiliar food items, the very basics for making a camp. A set of large, iron cages are littered carelessly about the dank cavern like furniture, three or four of them in all, and your skin prickles uncomfortably at the thought of what they could possibly be there for. You feel certain you wouldn't like any answers you find.

After a few seconds, Throat makes an impatient sound nearby, yanking you forcibly from your foreboding thoughts. With a start, you jerk your head back toward the older teen, your body stiffening as you recall just how much danger you're actually in. If Throat brought you to a place like this, he must have had a reason, but you can't imagine what it could possibly be. Nothing he's said or done so far the past few days makes any sense to you.

Satisfied that he has your attention, Throat grins, the all-too-familiar gleam of mania shining out from behind his ice-blue eyes. He's kneeling on the stone floor beside you, relaxed and leaning heavily on one palm that's resting flat against the ground near your head.

"There. That's better," he says in a sing-song voice, ruffling your blue hair with mockingly insincere affection. His every word is laced with acid venom. "Kido Jou, right? You were out for a long time; I thought for sure you'd be up again in less than an hour or two. I was actually starting to get bored. I mean, I didn't even squeeze you that hard—you must be even more fragile than I thought!"

He sounds sickeningly amused at the prospect. Automatically, you cringe away from his touch on your hair, trying to inch your face away, but Throat is having none of it: with another laugh, he leans over and positions his body so that he's kneeling above you on all fours, pressing down on your chest lightly with one hand to hold you still. Whatever is binding your hands behind your back secures them firmly in place, and the renewed pressure makes the muscles of your arms knot and sting uncomfortably with tingling needle-stings. Gulping in fear, you stare helplessly up at Throat, and the part of your mind that's training to be a doctor wonders distantly at how long you must have been unconscious to be in so much pain from so small a movement.

_Not helpful!_ you scream mentally at yourself, trying unsuccessfully to force your brain to come up with some course of action that will lead to you getting out of here right now. _Less medicine! More escape plans!  
_

"W-Why did you bring me here?" you finally stammer, your voice shaking badly as you desperately try to avoid meeting his eyes with your own. "Where's Gomamon? Please, take me back to my friends!"

Even without looking at Throat, you can sense his smile widening. "Hm, that's an excellent question, Jou," he says, pretending to consider you with his head tilting ever-so-slightly in your peripheral vision. "I guess you can say there are a lot of reasons I took you from the others. For one, I want to know _exactly_ why it is that you and your pathetic friends have come here to the Digital World, even though you haven't got the right."

"B-But we already told you—we don't have any idea what we're doing here, either!" you say desperately, praying that he'll listen to what you have to say, that some of the words will cut through the manic fog on his mind. "We hardly even know what this place is! I promise you, we just want to go home!"

You force yourself to look at him, hoping your words might have made an impact. Your heart sinks when you see that his falsely cheery smile is still anchored in place the same as before, though his eyes have hardened to slits of ice.

"That proves it, then," he hisses, leaning down so your faces are startlingly close. "The fact that you're so _ignorant_ of this world is a clear sign that you're not fit to be a Chosen Child! None of you are! Which brings me to my second reason for bringing you here—I'm doing it to send a _message_, to the ones who brought you to this world thinking they could _replace_ my legacy, just like that—I don't have to stand for it, not after everything I've done for this world! I bet you don't even have a Digimental Crest, do you? If you did, your pathetic digimon would have evolved already! Well? Do you? ANSWER ME!"

He's speaking so rapidly that you can hardly keep up, especially with your attention distracted by how frighteningly close he is to your face. "I-I don't know!" you beg, your voice cracking shamefully at a high pitch, "I don't know, I don't _know_ what a Digimental or a C-Crest is or any of that! _Please! _Don't kill me!"

You wrench your eyes shut, shuddering all over. For a moment, Throat says nothing, though you can hear his labored breathing above you, feel puffs of hot air on your skin. You're terrified of what he might do to you, in his fit of uncertain rage.

To your shock, you then feel a calloused hand gently brushing at the skin of your face. He wipes away an anxious bead of sweat from your forehead.

"Of course you don't know," Throat croons, sounding disconcertingly affectionate again. He's either playacting like this to throw you off-balance, feigning changes in mood to get under your skin, or else he's just constantly dominated by his changing mood swings. You don't know which possibility frightens you more. "You stupid, pathetic boy, of course you don't know what any of that means. After, all, you're not true a Chosen Child like me. You're just a pretender, a boy who likes to have a Digimon to boss around, without knowing what any of it really means."

You make an involuntary sound of fright, which makes your throat ache from somewhere very far away.

"W-What do you _want_ with me," you whimper at him again, not having enough bravery to voice the plea as a real question and not truly certain you want to know the answer anyway.

A second later your eyes flutter open in startled fear, as you feel a heavy weight settling down over the length of your body. Throat is lowering himself on top of you, making soothing noises and still touching your face in gentle motions even while the cruelty in his smile intensifies.

"I already told you, _Jou-senpai_," he whispers in a hushed voice, the movements of his mouth tickling along your outer ear, "I want to know what your group is doing here. I want to _break_ you all, one at a time, leave you in a mess so disgusting that no one will ever try to desecrate the legacy of the Chosen Children with pretenders, ever again."

You are unable to hold back a frightened sob at the threat, chest heaving hard before you can stop yourself. Throat pulls away from you a bit, enough so that you can see the white teeth in his smile through your tears. If possible, he looks even more gleeful and more terrible than before, but his gaze catches and you find yourself unable to look away.

"I have a third reason, too, you know," Throat murmurs huskily, eyes bright as he lays his palm gently against the flat plane of your stomach, slowly trailing downward with a smirk. "You wouldn't know it, Jou Kido, but it's been _such_ a long time since I've seen another human being. I'd forgotten completely what humans look like, after years of just Digimon and more Digimon. Now, I have another chance."

You didn't think it was possible for you to feel more sick and frightened than you already were, but with this statement, Throat manages to prove you wrong. You feel like you might actually throw up, at the unspoken threat he's implying in his words. Your whole body is shaking so hard that you can hear your teeth chattering in your skull, but you seem to have lost the ability to control your movements: you lie motionless aside from shaking on the stone floor while he presses himself over you again, running his hands along your sides in a way that feels like he's violating your skin and your soul itself beneath the thin fabric of your clothes. Tears stream, unbidden, down your face and over your lips, and Throat continues to speak, his voice full of undisguised longing and something else.

"For so long, when I was alone here, I've thought to myself at night: _'Even if it wasn't real. Even if it was only an imitation of my old companions,'_ " he says, lowly, with something almost like pain in the words, if you honestly believed that he could feel it. "Even if—if it was only a _fake_, a pathetic loser like you and your friends—when I saw you all for that first time, I thought to myself, '_Even just _that_ would be enough, wouldn't it? Having just that much, so I can pretend.' _It's not the same—I know, I _know_ you're not the same, but even having _that_ much, that would be enough for me..."

He wraps his arms around your back and pulls your body completely flush against his, leaning in to nip at your bruised throat with blunt teeth. Your trance finally breaks and you scream and thrash violently against him, struggling with all your might to get free, but Throat has you held securely in an iron grip completely at his mercy. You aren't going anywhere. And this time, Gomamon isn't here protect you: _nobody_ is here to protect you.

You break down, sobbing wildly, as the teenager starts to pull at your clothes. _I'm twelve years old,_ you shriek mentally in horror, with a wave of rolling illness that seems to turn your insides upside down. _I'm only twelve, for god's sake, I'm just a kid,_ _this shouldn't be **happening** to me!_

More than anything, you want one of your brothers to rush in here out of nowhere and save you. You want Shin to take you away from this mess, bring you safely back home where you belong. Maybe your friends will find you in time, you think feverishly to yourself, filled with the desperate hope of a drowning person. Someone _has_ to find you in time, don't they? This can't actually be _happening_. It isn't real!

The echoing sounds of your own screams sounds horribly, vividly real against the stone walls of the cavern, however—and no amount of frantic, distraught hope will erase Throat's hand, trailing threateningly now along your body, sliding its way up your shirt to reach your skin.


	3. Sear

You're so frightened by the hand working its way up your shirt, pulling it up along with your sweater vest up to expose your stomach, that you nearly miss the deft fingers of Throat's other hand pulling at the knots binding your hands together. You don't pay any attention to it until you feel a flash of hot pain searing the skin of both your wrists, and you wrench your hands apart with a gasp of pain, feeling raw liquid oozing down your arms.

Throat grins at you, pulling the bloody length of rope out from where it was trapped behind your back. You freeze at the sight of it, feeling a familiar plunge in your stomach that inevitably comes with the sight of blood. Throat laughs at the look your face and tosses the rope aside, then he seizes your left hand roughly so he can rid you of your bloodstained watch.

"Will you _stop_ that?" Throat demands in response to your renewed struggling, his tone half-joking and half-exasperated in contrast to your very real fear. You yelp in muffled terror as he throws your watch aside as carelessly as the rope and begins to tug in earnest at your shirt and vest. "For goodness' sake, Jou, I'm not going to hurt you for this part unless I have to. It'll be a _whole_ lot easier if you just calm down and lie still!"

"B-Be still?" you gasp incredulously, voice pitched embarrassingly high and shaking like your body. "Of c-_course_ I'm not going to be still, y-you _maniac_, you want to—you're t-trying to—to—"

You can't make yourself say it. Throat doesn't care. Undeterred by his orders, you fight him as hard as you can, thrashing and yelling, but in the end he does get your cramped, bleeding arms through the holes in your shirts. You shudder in fear as your bare torso is exposed to the claustrophobic stone cavern, your naked skin breaking out in tingling goosebumps.

Laughing breathlessly, Throat grabs your bloody wrists and pins them with ease to your sides, creating new pangs of discomfort that lance up both your arms in a wash of needle-pricks.

"Idiot," he tells you calmly, eyes twinkling with faint amusement. "For your information, I'm not _'_trying_'_ to do anything here. I am GOING to do it. And there is nothing in the world you can do to stop me, Jou Kido, so you may as well accept it now and make it easier on us both."

All the pain in your arms is driven from your mind at once. Before you can do more than gape up at Throat, utterly terrified, he bears down on you with his whole weight again, so that his clothed chest is pressing down hard onto your uncovered one. With paralyzing dread, you feel something hard poking you from beneath the fabric of his clothes, a solid inescapable _thing_ that presses menacingly against your naked stomach. You know exactly what it is, and what it wants from you.

The ghastly reality of your situation sinks in rather suddenly, and, with a gutted feeling, you register all the blood draining from your face in an instant. You let a high, frightened whimper against your will, and it echoes off the angular stone walls all around you. The sound seems to seal your doom.

Throat grins knowingly at you and then pulls away for a moment, his hands reaching for the buckle of your pants. Letting out a high, panicked whine from the back of your throat before you can stop yourself, you claw violently at him in unhinged desperation. Unfortunately, Throat only affords you a second's withering look of annoyance before dealing a hard _smack_ to your head with the back of his hand that makes white stars explode before your eyes.

By the time you can properly see again, the teen has your pants and underwear bunched down around your calves. Methodically, be's beginning to tug off your shoes and socks off with mechanical efficiency.

Startled, you shout loudly—"Nngh! let _GO!_"—and try kicking your legs to dislodge his grip. You only end up shaking one of your hi-top shoes loose, giving give him an easier oulling your pants free. He actually grins at you in thanks.

Moaning in terror, you attempt to twist onto your stomach with a renewed burst of strength, hoping that somehow you'll be able to crawl away once you've gotten to your hands and knees. Throat only snarls at you in annoyance, pulling you roughly back toward him with a hard, inhumanly powerful _yank_ to your lower leg. You shriek in pain, the force of his movement scraping skin from your knees and the heels of your hands; the jerking motion threatens to dislocate a joint or pull one of your muscles.

Satisfied that you won't try it again, Throat settles his weight back onto your legs. Briskly he pulls your remaining clothes free from your body, while you're still attempting to recover from the pain of his last assault. He throws your garments carelessly into a pile, your shorts landing on top of one of the empty cages nearby in the tunnel. As you're slowly managing to recover your senses, blushing furiously red in the face thanks to the removal of all your clothes, Throat starts crawling up your body with alarming self-assuredness and looks you over like a prized cut of meat.

Helpless to stop him, you lie naked trapped beneath his weight. Trembling uncontrollably, you wrench your eyes shut to escape the crawling feeling of his ice-blue eyes roaming over your skin. Only your glasses remain undisturbed, and with barely suppressed tears threatening to spill from behind your eyelids, those are no help at all.

Then, with another gentle motion of hands against the sides of your face, even your glasses are robbed of you. You are wearing nothing, and when Throat sits up to straddle you, the first thing he does is reach up to start removing his own clothing one piece at a time. He licks his lips staring down at you after he's pulled his shirt off, a hungry and terrible expression feeding into the omnipresent _mania_ waiting always behind his eyes.

You make one last, hopeless bid to free yourself, jerking wildly in all directions with any part your body you can move. There's not much point to it, since Throat is mercilessly holding your body in place with his weight, and he only watches you in amusement as you work yourself out. With a final scream of despair, you allow your body go slack beneath him, mind racing for a way out that doesn't exist.

Your teeth chatter hard when open your mouth a moment later. You still have one last-ditch effort to try and change Throat's mind, though you really don't have much faith it will work. You keep your eyes closed as you stutter your final plea.

"P-Please," you manage to choke out, through suffocating panic. "Please_, please_ let me go. Please, Throat, ohhh, don't do this. I, I _beg_ of you—I-I'll do _anything—_only please..."

Throat says nothing, remaining still atop your body like a statue made of warm flesh. A long moment passes, and you hear him sigh loudly, beginning to shift his weight gingerly above you, though you aren't certain what it's for.

Then, unexpectedly, his hands change their hold, seizing you firmly by the underarms so that his fingernails are just shy of digging into your skin. Your wet eyes fly open with a choked gasp, as he pulls you easily up off the ground with a deft strength that's _got_ to be impossible for a teenager his size. Unfazed by your small, whimpering noises of pitiful fear, Throat manipulates your scrawny, twelve-year-old frame as easily as ventriloquist might puppet a rag doll. With one hand he holds your wrist fast in a bruising grip, ignoring your panicked attempts to pry his fingers away, and then he reaches toward the forgotten bundle of supplies nearby the ground. Your eyes are blurred with tears, and you're struggling with all your might to pull your hand free, so it's only a matter of chance that you manage to catch a glimpse of him digging out a tiny plastic bottle from the folds of one of the blankets. You can't read the small label in your state, but you have a suspicion that weighs in your stomach like lead.

"You'll thank me for this later," Throat says conversationally, holding the little bottle upside down in two fingers and flicking it open, so he can pour a measure of liquid gel out onto the tanned skin of his palm. "This stuff might be a bit cold, but trust me, it's a _lot_ better than trying to go without it."

He hums a bit, stilling his movements to glance over at you with an air of appraisal. "Then again, you're such a _little_ thing that I probably couldn't go in dry, even if I wanted to. I've never done this before, obviously, since there were never any other humans, but I think I remember enough about how it's supposed to work. I've had plenty of time to practice..."

You only cry harder the more he talks, your struggles growing weaker and less coordinated with despair overtaking your mind and body. You can barely understand half of what he's saying anymore.

"No, no, oh no," you sob uselessly through your tears. "No, _noooo_, why me, p-please don't, no, I c-can't, I _can't_..."

Throat smiles distantly at you with his eyes half-lidded, murmuring some soothing nonsense to pacify you while he wipes a few tears from your face. His hands are as quick and dispassionate as ever, however, a moment later when his hands flip you briskly onto your stomach.

And nothing you say or do makes him stop.

* * *

When it finally ends, you're almost too far gone to register the difference. Maddened with pain and hysteria wrought by utter helplessness, you continue scrabbling uselessly against the stone floor with your hands, trying to claw your way free of iron grip pinning your sides. You keep at it until your fingertips are scraped raw and bleeding against the stone floor_—_the sight of them forces you back into reality long enough to hide your shaking hands beneath you, so you can avoid seeing any more blood. Your captor makes no attempt to free you from your terror-trance, either amused with your antics or indifferent.

_I must be dying_, you think feverishly as your eyes roll into the back of your head for the second time today, although unconsciousness isn't merciful enough to drag you down again to oblivion. _Oh_, _I must have done something to deserve this, I must have done something. What was it? Pain like **this** can't happen without a reason. Whatever it was, whatever I did, please forgive me. I'm sorry, I'm SORRY, I'll make it up to you, but **please** just make it stop whatever or whoever this was. Please help me. Save me, someone. I'll do anything—**ANYTHING**, I mean it, I'm so sorry, just please make it **stop.** Please, make it stop. I'm begging you. I know it was me.  
_

Unconsciously, you curl your trembling body into a ball as best you can, ignoring the white-hot pain that lances all the way up your spine. Throat slumps lazily against you, sated, but his hands still roam dreamily along your naked body. He pulls your battered frame limply against him, but somehow you manage float free of the reality of his presence, and the unspeakable horror it brings.

Instead, you find yourself wallowing longer in self-loathing as sharp as acid. The first and worst of the physical torture is over, but your ordeal hasn't ended just yet—as your physical suffering fades into the background noise, only a mere fraction of the greater cacophony which comprises your utter misery, a new round of self-inflicted torture begins within the recesses of your mind.

_This had to have happened for a reason, _you rationalize, dangerously, already far too close to the breaking point for what is coming. You must have done _something_ wrong, something bad, that caused this awful thing to occur. Bad things don't just _happen_ without a reason, do they? The universe surely can't be that cruel.

It's your own fault, you decide, the vague concept of guilt making sense to your frantic, badly compromised logic. After all, you were always afraid and weak, weren't you? You could never do anything right. You were always the one messing up the simplest things; you couldn't even get the others home when they were counting on you.

It's only logical that this would happen to you. You're the one who deserved it, out of everyone. Didn't Throat call _you_ the weakest of your friends before he took you? He must have seen them, all your countless flaws and shortcomings, the cracks in your self-made image that make you who you are. That must be why. It all happened because of what you were, who you are.

Insincere. Untrustworthy. Faithless. Unreliable.

That moment, your emotional decimation, is all it takes: with these poisonous thoughts, the hidden emblem shining faintly in your soul begins to die.

And with it, one beacon of hope is lost for the salvation of the Digital World.


End file.
